Four U.S. soldiers charged with rape and murder

FORT CAMPBELL, Kentucky (CNN) -- Four U.S. soldiers accused of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl and slaying her sister and their parents will face courts-martial on murder charges, military officials say.

The commander of the 101st Airborne Division has referred murder charges against the soldiers for the alleged crimes that occurred in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, in March. Two of the soldiers could face the death penalty if convicted.

According to a written statement, Maj. Gen. Thomas Turner made the decision after reviewing a report of the investigation and receiving recommendations from the investigating officer, the appointing authority who directed the investigation and his staff judge advocate.

One of the soldiers, 23-year-old Army Spec. James P. Barker, told an Army criminal investigator that after the killings he poured kerosene on the girl's bullet-ridden body, according to testimony in August at a military hearing. The girl's father, mother and five-year-old sister were also killed, according to military officials.

Barker said in an interview that he held the girl down while she was raped by another soldier, Sgt. Paul Cortez, 23, according to Special Agent Benjamin Bierce of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division.

Barker said he then attempted to rape the girl himself, before she was shot to death by former Pfc. Steven D. Green, Bierce said. Green is no longer in the military and faces charges in civilian court.

What kind of nutballs are we (the U.S.) sending over to "protect" and "help" these people as "friends of their new democracy"? Do I get any say in the punishment? Because I have some ideas. This really makes me angry.

"We're looking for high school graduates with no more than one felony on their record," one recruiter said.

The Army has even looked behind prison bars for fill-in recruits -- in one reported case, they went to a "youth prison" in Ogden, Utah. Although Steven Price had asked to see a recruiter while still incarcerated, he was "barely 17 when he enlisted last January" and his divorced parents say "recruiters used false promises and forged documents to enlist him."

What kind of nutballs are we (the U.S.) sending over to "protect" and "help" these people as "friends of their new democracy"?

Any kind we can get! You think it's easy meeting recruitment quotas?

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.
...
The groups are being abetted, the report said, by pressure on recruiters, particularly for the Army, to meet quotas that are more difficult to reach because of the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq.

The report quotes Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."

Mr. Barfield said Army recruiters struggled last year to meet goals. "They don't want to make a big deal again about neo-Nazis in the military," he said, "because then parents who are already worried about their kids signing up and dying in Iraq are going to be even more reluctant about their kids enlisting if they feel they'll be exposed to gangs and white supremacists."

Yes it would be, if there hadn't been an enlistment requirement to believe that all Iraqis are dangerous terrorists who need to be kept in check by all means.
Most sane soldiers with some moral qualms are not allowed participate.

That is, the usual selection preference of dumb soldiers is in force in the US (as in just about any other conflict throughout history).

What is special about the US, and the current generation is that these criminals are being brought before the bar of justice.

No it's not special for the US. For example we have swedish soldiers convicted for war crimes in Bosnia.
But maybe you ment that what is special is that US is now bringing their own soldiers to court, just as we have been doing here in Europe for a while?

what bugs me about this is that there are tons of alleged crimes like this, you can find them to some degree everywhere you look and the coalition (not just the us) officals will always say 'no one in this army is commiting any war crimes' and every now and then these things still pop up. theres no question that these officals' remarks are inaccurate, the question is to what degree are they inaccurate.

These things happen in war all the time, and shouldn't come as a surprise.

So you would do the same? Seems to me cultural background and the individual are the main determining factors.
I do see that this has roots in our (primate) history of violence and that genocides actually have the same pattern - kill the men, rape the women.

So you would do the same? Seems to me cultural background and the individual are the main determining factors.
I do see that this has roots in our (primate) history of violence and that genocides actually have the same pattern - kill the men, rape the women.

No, of course I wouldn't do the same. What I ment is that when you start a war, things like this will always happen. There are no "clean" wars, even though some pro-war people naively seems to think so.

I see what you're saying. True we shouldn't be surprised given past evidence, but that doesn't mean that people won't be outraged by it. It sounded like an excuse someone might give to not do anything about it and hence let it continue as an acceptable loss.

I see what you're saying. True we shouldn't be surprised given past evidence, but that doesn't mean that people won't be outraged by it. It sounded like an excuse someone might give to not do anything about it and hence let it continue as an acceptable loss.

That the war criminals should be punished is obvious. It's great that US finally seems to go in that direction. What would be even better is if US stopped starting unnecessary wars. Indirect it's the warlords who are responsible for all those crimes.

I think it's obvious that the psychology/sociology of the soldiers is wrong. They are either nutjobs or the nature of the situation turns ordinary people into monsters. We shouldn't say "oh well, it happens", we should do something about it. I have a suspicion that private forces would better withstand such behaviour.

In that recent friendly fire video, we hear one of the pilots say "Go get him!". If that is evident of the mentality of the soldiers, you know something is seriously wrong higher up.